Fan Attic Tapes

An interview with Ron Lacer
by Scott Hefflon

Runt of the Litter is your third compilation, and your first on CD, I believe.
Actually there’s a third tape compilation, Life Support 2 – Live At TT’s, which I didn’t do very much promotion for because I really didn’t expect to sell a lot.

What bands were on that?
Showcase Showdown, Bratface, Bald Guys, Ukla, and Cobalt.

And was it their whole set?
I only used like four songs by each band, and six songs by Showcase Showdown, but their songs were so short that it’s actually less time than the other bands got. It’s about an hour-long tape altogether.

Do you find that a lot of the bands you work with have pretty rabid fans?
Some of them. A lot of them will have rabid fans in the future, but nobody has discovered them yet.

It does seem you choose a lot of Boston up-and-coming favorites. The band puts out a 7″ now and then, or another demo, and then you put out an unreleased track.
About half of the bands on Runt of the Litter already had records out, so I guess they already had an audience of sorts established. And then there’s the other half of the bands that didn’t have anything out yet except, like, a tape or two, so you would think their fans would be more excited than the others.

As an overall concept, it’s either a tide-me-over until the band’s next tape and, God knows when that’s gonna come out, or, it’s an introduction to a bunch of bands in a pretty broad genre.
I like to think that somebody who already knows a few of the bands is probably gonna like the rest of the bands, too. Like, having Showcase Showdown introduces a lot of people to the other bands.

It’s also not a real risky proposition getting one of your comps. If they like one or two of the bands, especially for the money…
Yeah, I try to sell the stuff cheap. The CD you get for $10 postage paid. At pretty much every store I’ve gotten it into, they’re selling it for under $10.

Was it a change of heart, or just a smart business move, to go to CD?
I guess it was a smart business move. Not too many people will buy tapes, even a really well put-together tape. CDs are a lot easier to sell because people will take a chance on a CD. And radio stations will pay attention to it, because it’s easier to play a CD.

Who produced the CD?
I’m not sure if there was a producer.

How did that work out?
The bands were responsible for all the recording. I just took their DATs.

Who did all the final mixdowns?
A friend of the guy that’s been duplicating the tapes. He doesn’t know much about punk rock, so it was really cool working with him on a different level.

Is it important that the engineer has a certain understanding of the aesthetic the bands are trying to get across?
I don’t think with what I’m doing that it’s really important. I need somebody who’s willing to keep his hands off of it, and not want to make it more punk rock or something. It’s like, just take what the bands have created and string them all together. That’s what I wanna do with the compilations.

Having the volume levels pretty even is an important thing.
That was about the only thing I felt was worth, or actually necessary, to change. Like August Spies recorded live off the soundboard at The Middle East. That’s OK. I don’t mind what some people call bad sound quality, It’s just different sound quality.

Where do you find the bands you work with?
The first couple of bands that I saw were Showcase Showdown and Ukla. And the Bald Guys. I just started going to their shows all the time. I’d see their opening bands, and I’d like them, and then I’d go out whenever they were playing. It just branched out from there. Now I’m getting to the point again where I don’t know any of the bands, I just hope I’ll like something. I’ve found a few great bands that way.

It’s a pretty risky endeavor.
Yeah. I like Showcase Night, Monday nights at The Middle East. You’ll get an acoustic band, a ’50s garage rock band, and a punk rock band, all smashing the place up. You never know what it’s gonna be like.

How many people actually show up for the showcases?
Very few, unfortunately. It’s mostly just the friends of the bands. I’ll go and nobody will know who I am, which is kind of fun. Sometimes I feel like people are starting to recognize me, but I go to these new band showcases and I just stand there drinking and if I like a band, I’ll talk to them afterwards and tell them about what I do. Otherwise, I don’t talk to anybody except the people who work at the club.

Will there come a time when you’ll stop looking for new bands and just choose a few favorite bands you really want to focus on?
I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Part of my fanatic nature is I always want the new thing, the band that I haven’t heard before. The thing I love most is hearing a great song for the first time by a band I’ve never seen before. If I actually stop feeling that way, I’d be a completely different person. I do want to keep putting out compilations with new bands, and I also want to put out compilations with bands I already know, and an occasional record by one band.

You’re actually gonna do a record by one band?
Well, I have a possibility. I’m trying to put Kermit’s Finger and Penis Flytrap together. They both have an albums worth of material recorded and they wanna put out CDs, but they can’t afford it. I thought since they each had about 30 minutes of material ready, it’s perfect for a split CD. We’d each pay for a third of it, and we each get a third of the CDs.

Are some of these bands pretty organized with mailing lists and stuff?
Yeah, some of them are; and some of them don’t give a shit. It’s amazing that some bands can even get shows considering how little effort they put into it, while other people try real hard all the time and they never get shows. Being in a band means different things to different people. Some people want it to be their life’s work or their job, and some people just want to do it because they want to have fun; it’s the chance to get in free to shows and see other bands.

It really does change case by case.
That’s one of the things that defines whether or not I like a band – whether or not they’re enjoying what their doing. I’ve seen bands and enjoyed their music, but it doesn’t look like they’re enjoying themselves up there. It’s like a chore, so I don’t even want to get involved. I recently decided for my next compilation, Runt of the Litter 2, that I’m not going to use any of the bands from the first one. There are just so many other bands I want to work with.

Some of the songs on Runt of the Litter have a different sound than I’ve come to expect.
Yeah, there’s a little more of the hardcore sound. I used to be a big hardcore fanatic, but I like stuff with more melodies now. I don’t like the “gruff” vocal style much anymore.

Are all the bands actually from Boston?
They’re all from around Boston, except maybe Baylies Band, who are from New Bedford. They play more in Rhode Island, but all the other bands play mostly in Boston. I’m thinking of expanding though, and allowing bands from New England in general to be on here. There’s one band from New Hampshire I’d like to get on the next compilation.

Do you see yourself including New York bands as well?
New York already has plenty of labels and their own support system. I think New England needs more good labels.

There’s a whole different identity. Manhattan is in New York, but most of it isn’t the streets of New York. It’s just an office in a skyscraper. That’s one thing I like about Boston; it has loyalty to it’s surroundings. Sometimes that’s seen as a limitation, but overall, it’s good. Boston has recently been notorious for hardcore, rather than punk rock. But you put it right on your cover, “BOSTON PUNK/POP.” Did anybody mind the categorization?
Nobody has said anything. I think the bands on the compilations understand. They might’ve been more upset if it was “pop punk!” There’re probably gonna be more hardcore bands on the next one.

Did you ever think of putting out a straight hardcore compilation?
Nah, that’d be boring. I like hardcore, but I don’t like a steady diet of it. If I’m gonna sit there and listen to a hardcore record, I’m gonna get bored pretty quick.

How did you get your start?
I’ve been a record collector for twelve years. All that time, I was making mixed tapes for myself. I’ve got close to 100 compilation tapes that I’ve made for myself over the years. And it’s like this huge stack of tapes. That’s basically what I’m doing now, with my label; going out and picking out my favorite songs from bands, making compilations, and selling them to people.

In the beginning, were they national or local bands?
Mostly international stuff. Obscure stuff. I’d actually never heard Fugazi except for on the radio a few times. I always go for the obscure bands nobody else has heard of.

Do you consciously shy away from bands you’ve heard of?
I shy away from bands that are really popular. It’s sort of a mindset I have. I want the obscure stuff. I don’t have time to listen to the stuff everybody else is listening to.

Isn’t that a limitation in perspective or conversation?
Yeah. It makes it difficult to talk to people about bands I like, trying to describe their sound. You know, I can’t reference them to the bands they recognize.

Are there exceptions?
There are definitely exceptions, like the “classics,” so to speak, of punk rock; The Dickies, Stiff Little Fingers, The Damned. It’s just that any band from the past 10 years that’s really well-known, maybe NOFX, or Bad Religion, or Offspring, I haven’t heard anything by them. I was trying to see if there was something special about them that made them so popular. The majority of the songs weren’t really great to me, so I wasn’t really willing to go beyond the fact that, oh, they’re already popular so I don’t even want to pay attention.

I heard you’re starting a distro company?
Yeah, I go to all-ages shows and set up a table. I started just selling my tapes and CDs, but I was looking after other people’s stuff, too. It just sort of logically grew into doing the distribution.

Is it only bands you work with?
I’m also trying to distribute by trading with certain labels. Like, I’ll send them 10 copies, and they’ll send me five of this, five of that. If I know they have a compilation CD that’s really great, I’ll take 10 copies of that. You know, they do them through the mail order, too. It’s great if you can get distributors interested. You don’t have to wait for them to pay you for the records they sold. They send you records and you try to sell them. It’s a lot easier to work like that. I don’t go to the all-ages grindcore shows. It’s not my scene. I like Rodent Popsicle (the guys from Toxic Narcotic). They’re doing sort of the same thing I do with their distribution, but they’re covering one side of the punk spectrum, and I’m covering the other. They’re political hardcore and grind, and I’m more the “pop” side. Between the two of us, we cover the scene pretty well.

Do you ever see each other?
We see each other at shows a lot. We set up next to each other. They’re great guys. They should be on the next compilation.

That’s kind of a stretch for you, isn’t it?
No, I don’t think so. Lately they’ve been more “punk” sounding than grindcore. They’ve progressed since their last record, I think. It’ll be interesting to see what the next recording sounds like.

Are you really gonna call it Runt of the Litter 2?
Yeah, I want a series of them. A friend of mine who runs Really Fast Records in Sweden, they’re up to like, Number 11 now of their compilations.

Doesn’t that turn out to be like Chicago’s albums or something?
No, because like me, Really Fast puts different bands on each compilation. They cover the whole Sweden scene, so it’s pretty cool.

I mean, I’ll have other kinds of compilations too. Like, you know, the one that’s gonna work with bands from Runt of the Litter. Put out like a single’s worth of material by each one.

Are you doing a live tape based off of each release?
I thought about it. I recorded some of the record release parties for Runt of the Litter, but the tape deck ran out of juice. I wasn’t gonna be able to do a complete tape of all the bands.

It seems you do this idea by idea, that you don’t like to get locked into any one thing. You do what you wanna do, then put it out and see if it works.
And I don’t have anybody to answer to but myself. I do it because I want to do it.